Alfred Packer’s Grave

Colorado’s notorious cannibal, Alfred Packer (1842-1907), is buried in Littleton Cemetery with a military grave marker – he was a Civil War veteran. In the photo below you can see that his headstone is chipped and a cement slab covers his grave. Both of these were caused by a Halloween prank. In the 1960s and 70s kids would sneak into the cemetery and steal Alfred Packer’s gravestone, usually on Halloween. But it always turned up somewhere, often on someone’s doorstep. Your doorbell rings and you open the door expecting trick or treaters, only to find a cannibal’s tombstone on your front porch. During one of these pranks the grave marker was chipped, and eventually the city got tired of all this Halloween nonsense and had the grave and its marker cemented down. Just in case anyone had any strange ideas about stealing Alfred himself, they made sure the cement slab covered the whole grave.

This is a good example of a marble headstone for Union Civil War veterans – the person’s name and military unit are within a shield. Packer’s tombstone is engraved with: “Alfred Packer, Co. F, 16 U.S. Inf.”

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11 Responses to Alfred Packer’s Grave

I didn’t think I’d really be interested in a web site about grave markers but this is quite informative. I’m somewhat of a History buff and I appreciate culture in most instances. I guess I never thought about a grave marker saying much other than who was there. Hmm…pretty interesting stuff and tasteful.

I was quite surprised to see the spelling of Alferd Packer’s name
on his grave. I’m a native of Littleton, though I never visited the
grave, and every Colorado schoolchild knows his name was
spelled Alferd — “er” not “re” — so it’s interesting to see that
the gravestone spells it “re.”
We’ve always been proud of our Colorado cannibal, and in fact the
cafe in the student union at CU in Boulder is called the Packer Grill.

i don’t know the whole story..but it seems to me that if people had died as a result of the snowstorm when the were stranded in the Colorado Rockies during the 1800’s, that maybe Packer didn’t intend to become a cannibal, however, he instinctually needed to survive. If he killed the people to stay alive, then yes, he is a murderer and was justice was properly served.